317: MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY!

Today is May 1, also referred to as "May Day". May Day is an ancient spring festival in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s an astronomical holiday, one of the year’s four cross-quarter days, or day that falls more or less midway between an equinox and solstice – in this case the March equinox and June solstice. The other cross-quarter days are Groundhog Day on February 2, Lammas (festival of the wheat harvest) on August 1 and Halloween on October 31.


Mayday is also the word used around the world to make a distress call via radio communications. Mayday signals a life-threatening emergency, usually on a ship or a plane, although it may be used in a variety of other situations. Procedure calls for the mayday distress signal to be said three times in a row — Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! — so that it won’t be mistaken for another word or phrase that sounds similar under noisy conditions. A typical distress call will start with mayday repeated three times, followed by all the relevant information that potential rescuers would need,.

Mayday got its start as an international distress call in 1923. It was made official in 1948. It was the idea of Frederick Mockford, who came up with the word because it sounded like the French word m’aider, which means “help me.” Sometimes a mayday distress call is sent by one vessel on behalf of another vessel in danger. This is known as a mayday relay. A mayday relay is sometimes necessary if the vessel in danger loses radio communications. If a mayday call is repeated and not acknowledged, another vessel hearing the call may attempt to relay it again and again until help is reached. A mayday call is not something to be taken lightly.

I consider one the prayers that was given at yesterday's  Washington: A Man of Prayer event a MayDay call for help. It was given by Rabbi Jonathon Cahn.  (The “Washington: A Man of Prayer” commemorates the events of April 30, 1789, when, after being sworn in at Federal Hall, President Washington, accompanied by Congress, proceeded to St. Paul’s Chapel where they “offered dedicatory prayers to God in divine services on America’s behalf.”)

Cahn’s words of warning referred specifically to the Supreme Court justices who are currently hearing arguments on whether the U.S. government should mandate recognition of homosexual “marriage” across the country.

 He said: “The justices of the Supreme Court took up their seats [in a hearing] on whether they should strike down the biblical and historic definition of marriage,” he said. “That the event should even take place is a sign this is America of [George] Washington’s warning … a nation at war against its own foundation.” Washington’s warning was the smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation “that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself hath ordained.”

He noted the Supreme Court opens sessions with the words, “God save the United States and this honorable court.”

“If this court should overrule the word of God and strike down the eternal rules of order and right that heaven itself ordained, how then will God save it?” he asked. “Justices, can you judge the ways of God? There is another court and there another judge, where all men and all judges will give account.

“If a nation’s high court should pass judgment on the Almighty, should you then be surprised God will pass judgment on the court and that nation? We are doing that which Israel did on the altars of Baal,” he said.

“We are exchanging our light for darkness.”

He said America’s biblical foundation was affirmed throughout history and the nation came into existence “solely for the glory and purposes of God.”

“No historian can rewrite that. No president can expunge that,” he warned. “If a thousand angels swore on a thousand Bibles that this was not the case, it would in no way alter the fact. … America was brought into existence for the will and purposes of God.”

He explained ancient Israel turned away from God.

“They drove God out of the government. They worshiped idols and served other gods. They celebrated immorality and they persecuted righteousness. The blessings of God were removed and replaced with judgments,” he said.

Now, he said, “America has made the same mistakes.”

He cited the deaths of 55 million through abortion.

“What we were warned never to do we now have done,” he thundered.

Moving to directly confront President Obama, whose pro-abortion and pro-homosexual agenda has been unparalleled in American history, he questioned what happens when a leader places his left hand on the Bible to assume to highest office in the land but with his right hand “enacts laws that violate the laws of God.”

“Mr. President, when you address the House, look up above the senators and the representatives, above the Supreme Court justices, you’ll see a face, the only full visage in that wall. It is the face of Moses. … It would say this, ‘No man can overrule the laws of God. No judgment of man can stand against the judgment of God’.”

 America, he warned, is faced with a critical decision, “Choose you this day whom you will serve … if the Lord be God, then follow Him. If Baal, then follow him and go to hell.”

Believers, he said, will “not bow down our knees to Baal,” the politically correct or anything other than God.

“Jesus the Messiah,” he said, “is the only answer, the only chance that America has that it might once again shine with the presence of the living God … and not go to hell.”

Only time will tell if we find ourselves all yelling, MayDay, MayDay, MayDay!